


Two Minds

by ac1d6urn (Acid), Sinick



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: M/M, Mind Meld, Occlumency, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-09
Updated: 2011-01-09
Packaged: 2017-10-14 14:50:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/150434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Acid/pseuds/ac1d6urn, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sinick/pseuds/Sinick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A lesson in which more than Occlumency is learned.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Minds

  
  
  
  


## Harry

Occlumency isn't like flying, except when it is. Harry can't fly without a broom. He can't just take off and soar on his own, not like Snape can, but that doesn’t stop Harry from pretending. He closes his eyes and takes his hands off the broomstick, throwing his arms wide as wings, feeling the wind pour through his outstretched fingertips. At least in his imagination, Harry can fly without any help at all.

Harry imagines many things: delirious and depraved, delicious and damn desperate. And as he meets reality nose-to-Nose, all those fantasies that fill his mind’s eye have to be pushed back into the deeper, darker corners. Harry tries so hard to concentrate on nothing at all and lets chaos fill his thoughts like a shield. It's not quite Occlumency; it’s as instinctive as his not-quite-unassisted flight, unreliable as the wind. But it’s the best he can do, and he needs something to work at last.

Harry grasps at random images then, desperate as a drowning man clutching at straws. He focuses on a bead of sweat glistening down a hooked nose. Greasy strands frame Snape’s face, black over sallow; and Snape stares down at him with the enigmatic stare of a Legilimens.

Harry hides his secrets the only way he can: by an onslaught of irrationality and mental chaos which makes Snape wince in irritation and rub his temples. As he watches those clever, nimble hands from a safe distance, Harry wonders why, at any other time, he can easily imagine the Half-Blood Prince (his prick pushing into Harry, driving him to bliss thrust by thrust, making him beg for harder, deeper, more) yet right now, he barely dares to come within arms’ reach of Snape.

Snape is untouchable and always has been: his robes buttoned from the throat down, his face hooded by hair, his eyes as hard and dark as flint, his motives as impenetrable as his mind, apart from that one frantic glimpse of it in Harry’s fifth year. Harry wants to ram through those defenses, tear off that starched collar and rip open those robes. He wants to suck and bite that throat, touch and taste and claim that body, yet somewhere between enraged wanting, staring, and charging, reason intervenes. _Those were my dreams, but this is Snape, and Snape is not mine._ And then Harry wants to confess his dreams as sins.

But he’d die if Snape knew.

If Snape didn’t kill him first.

Or would he?

Does Snape know? The Half-Blood Prince of Harry’s imagination knows everything. He reads Harry like a book, and afterwards he takes Harry’s blank margins and overwrites them with himself, adding line after line, passages and paragraphs of stronger, better, wiser. Harry needs only to think it and the Prince does, or does not and makes Harry wish he did, stubborn sod, until Harry nearly begs him to do it. That sheer need to have or to be had, by someone who knows not a hero, or a Saviour, or even ‘Potter’; but who knows him, Harry, a boy, a man, a tangle of raw thought trying to make the best of it. The thought that someone – Severus, his name is Severus – truly understands Harry, knows him inside and out, better than Harry knows himself, is the most intoxicating aphrodisiac of all.

Harry wants more.

His imagination craves it, with every inch of his skin, every arch of his neck, every hardening thrust of his body against an unforgivingly unyielding, bony frame until that harsh, thin mouth loses its sneer and descends on his neck. A bite? Harry can’t tell in the sucking, licking onslaught of sensation. In reality there’d be a bruise, but no matter how much Harry wants it, dreams mark only the mind. But then his neck burns with unexpected heat, too intense to be brought on by mere imagination, and then his face burns too, under Snape’s dark stare, all too real and penetrating him whole.

 _Oh shit. **Occlumens**!_

Suddenly the pressure eases, and Snape is gone from Harry’s mind.

“Good. Again.”

They both look away too soon.

Harry fidgets, uneasy and tongue-tied. He can dream a thousand dreams, do a thousand things, magical and mundane. But he’s rubbish at subtlety, especially the seductive kind. He can’t even manage a simple suggestion: not even deliberately parting his lips and licking them, like he does so often in his mind, just before he sucks the Half-Blood Prince’s cock.

Yet in reality, he’s afraid to lock gazes for too long, afraid to part his lips to speak, in case his fantasies spill from him, even without Veritaserum. They’d pour straight from his mind and into Snape’s: a dam bursting into a waterfall of forbidden images. They’d spill over him and wet him and cascade down, down, down... Along each and every path Harry imagines those sallow, long fingers would travel. They’d trace his scar. They’d strum just the right chord between Harry’s hard cock and his aching balls until he’d cry out, played like an instrument and craving more of it.

Harry wants to scream. Harry wants Snape to nod sagely, and whisper – ‘I know.’ Just a soft whisper in Harry’s ear, barely a breath: ‘I know you, Harry.’

‘Does it mean I’m yours?’ Harry’d ask.

‘Do you want to be?’

‘Yes. Does it mean you’re mine as well?’

And Severus would-

 _Enough!_ Snape would say that daydreams are dangerous. At the best of times they could be guessed and used against him, but what’s much worse is that right now Snape could see them all. Harry gulps and reaches frantically for his familiar smokescreen of erratic images. Chaos. Soft black fall of fabric at the sleeves, a twist of thin lips, a sarcastic brow over a heavy-lidded glare. What would Snape say if he ever saw the truth Harry was trying to hide? All of Harry’s dark, dirty, guilty pleasures would be dragged up to the surface of his ravished mind. And after Harry’s deepest desires had been laid bare for examination, like a Boggart shrivelling in sun and laughter, what would Snape decide to do with him afterwards? Harry shudders at the shocking idea of Severus knowing the worst, but the prickle of gooseflesh is joined by the stir and swell of his cock.

 _Enough! Occlumens!_

It’s just as pointless to guess as it is to dream. Harry will never know how Snape would react, because Harry has to be careful to keep Snape at a safe distance, even when he is within arm’s reach.

How awkward it is to watch someone’s grip on a wand handle and wonder, _How would that touch really feel on me? I’ve dreamed of it enough. Would it be as good as my dreams? Better?_ Not a thousand warm, wild, desperate strokes, just one real touch. The very first touch, raw, awkward and strange, from the hand of a stranger. As familiar as Severus’ hands may seem in dreams, in reality Snape is still as much of a stranger as always. Harry isn’t besotted enough to expect the waking world to mirror his fantasy. In reality Snape avoids any contact, so all Harry can have is his imagination.

But oh, how Harry craves more than just that, more of everything, more of Snape.

It’s not good to want something for so long, but ever since he was young, Harry wanted the impossible: Mum’n’Dad, Dudley’s toys, the wide open sky above him. Now Harry is old enough to tell when a dream is out of reach, and this one is. He can’t catch it like a snitch just by wanting hard enough and trying hard enough, not when it comes to Snape. The man has been distant and difficult as long as Harry has known him, so why would now be any different? Yet Harry still watches those potion-stained hands, as quick as spiders, as precise as a duellist’s angled wand. His mind wanders, wonders, and wants. Without reason, without hope, still Harry dreams. He weaves instant realities with wishes that will never come true, and then he lives them, embracing desire, embodied in the Half-Blood Prince’s prick, Severus’ hands, Snape’s stare.

“Harry.”

The vision vanishes like a burst bubble when in the world outside Harry’s mind, Snape speaks. Harry is caught, locked in that black stare, and in his own shock. _He said ‘Harry’! He never calls me Harry!_ Harry’s skin crawls with the terrifying thrill of what-if. _Oh fuck, what if he knows?_ Snape advances and Harry can’t do much more than stumble backward, caught into Snape’s whispered “Legilimens!” like a moth in the eye of a whirlwind. He is spinning, falling into that depthless dark gaze, but instead of falling forever, as Harry had feared, at the end he comes to rest, and he’s not alone.

“Harry,” Severus says. “I know.”

|    


## Severus

Legilimency isn’t like breathing, except when it is. It’s not an addiction, Severus warns himself; he can stop at any time. He doesn’t _need_ to slip into the unguarded minds behind his students’ eyes, in the eternal-springing hope that there might be _something_ behind the glaze of boredom that Potions class always induces. But he rarely found anything in the wastes of space between juvenile ears, not until Lily’s son arrived at Hogwarts, and winced away from their first eye-contact, mind-contact, as if Severus’ merest mental brush had burned his too-innocent brain. That reaction had been unexpected enough to pique Severus’ interest.

Severus sees many things in Potter’s mind as the boy grows older: delicious and delirious, desperate and damn depraved. And as he dives into Harry’s mind and tastes his thoughts, insatiable curiosity rushes hot blood through Severus’ body and lashes his cold heart to a rare, strong beat: pulsing _more, more, more_. Severus slides scalpel-smooth past the chaos Harry throws into his path, homing in on the truth, the only truth to be trusted. People lie to each other always, with words and deeds, but they seldom lie to themselves in the presumed privacy of their own psyches. His habit of dipping covertly into others’ minds is actually necessity, a daily routine demanded by Severus’ scrutinizing, suspicious nature. Legilimency isn’t always infallible, but Severus is damn near perfect at it, his technique polished by years of solitude, focus and practice.

Severus experiences Potter’s thoughts with more delicacy than he’d ever wielded as a guest at one of Malfoy’s banquets: sampling this memory and tasting that emotion and always selecting the best. He concentrates on the green of those eyes, and ignores the glaze of smudged spectacles. He focuses on the implication of lustful athletics in that unruly black mop, and filters out all resemblance to Potter’s despicable father. But in all of Severus’ epicurean mental indulgences and dismissals, it’s the memory of Potter’s green eyes that stays with him, long after he leaves Potter’s mind.

Severus penetrates Potter’s secrets the most efficient way he can: avoiding the onslaught of irrationality and mental chaos which threatens migraine, sliding past all that surface noise and sinking deeper still. Potter watches his hands even as he watches Potter’s mind, and it’s easy to keep Potter’s attention there, with a twist of his wrist, a flex of his fingers. It’s as if Potter expects Severus to hex him as soon as he looks away. Severus wonders if Potter would jump out of his skin if he was ever actually touched.

Potter is accessible and always has been: his eyes and his mind wider than any open book, his manner rambunctious, and his voice as loud as a cheer. He is an innocent who wears his heart and all its weaknesses on his sleeve, and thus any casual rumour wounds him, let alone the malice of a true foe. He’ll never survive Voldemort; he can barely survive the world as it is. Just as well Severus is there to protect him, since Potter is constitutionally incapable of guarding himself, his own reactions. And still - when Severus has spent so much time immersed in Potter’s mind that his annoying optimism has started to rub off - Severus wonders if there might be more to Potter than this; whether the lad might even be capable of learning discretion.

The moment passes as quickly as it arrives.

Potter is an impetuous brat with no sense of self-preservation, with no sense at all.

Or is he?

Did Potter ever try to learn sense? Did he ever have the urge to attempt such a gargantuan task? He certainly has the curiosity to drive him to all manner of impossible challenges. Perhaps Potter, with his Gryffindor habit of heroics, can manage even this uncharacteristic achievement. Perhaps Severus can use all his sorely-tried patience to guide Potter toward that goal. So Severus studies Potter like a project: he references and cross-references the rare tidbits of sense and knowledge and reason in Potter’s hormonally-driven, sex-soaked mind. What drives him to continue diving into the gutters of Potter’s thoughts is the knowledge of what Potter can become, if given the right incentive, the kind of incentive Severus can provide him. It’s intoxicating, all that raw potential: the possibilities that may emerge if only Potter’s impressionable mind is steadied and steered in the right direction by a knowing hand. By Severus’ hand.

Severus wants that.

He desires it with the calculating, cautious mind of a predator, with the hungry focus of a snake circling toward prey. But Potter is not prey to be swallowed whole. Devouring him is out of the question, no matter how ecstatic a mouthful he’d make. So instead of his body, Severus penetrates his thoughts, slicing them carefully apart until reason emerges well-hidden underneath the chaos, until he understands the patterns of Potter’s mind and actions, until he takes the boy’s mind apart, puts it back together like a polished riddle, and learns what makes him tick. It’s unexpectedly invigorating, the rush of triumph from solving the puzzle of Potter’s thoughts, and so Severus’ mind rises to the challenge, and he maintains his hold on that green gaze, until he feels it holding him in turn, until he drowns in that warm summer ocean.

 _Oh yes. **Legilimens**!_

The lad gulps, as if he is the one drowning. And then he manages, for the very first time, the correct mental response of withdrawal from Severus’ intrusion.

Surprise at this sudden success breaks his train of thought, and he says in a teacher’s clipped tones, “Good. Again.”

The achievement comes at the cost of catching a glimpse of Potter’s thoughts, of diving deeper than usual into the sort of images Severus should have no interest in if he were an upright man, as opposed to a man rapidly becoming erect. Severus catches a sensation of sharp, invading heat: desire for Marked skin. Severus’ left arm tenses in disapproval. They both look away too soon.

Severus doesn’t move. It is weakness to show unease, and he isn’t about to share any of his weaknesses with Potter. If Severus’ parents had more imagination, subtlety would surely have been his middle name. To those in Slytherin, seduction was simply another form of coin; the flicker of heavylidded glances, the pout of lips moistened by the flick of a tongue, were all just bait to hook an unwary fish. So the involuntary flush in Potter’s cheeks should have been grounds for scorn, in its sheer instinctive artlessness. It really shouldn’t have made Severus ache to feel that heat with the sensitive skin of his lips.

Reading the body is not like Legilimency at all. Most people can manage some insight: understanding the flesh is an instinctive, universal ability. The rhythm of breathing, the hues of blood beneath the skin or the gleam of sweat on it. So many weaknesses don’t require the rare magic of Legilimency to find, can be laid bare by mere observation, such as any Muggle might manage. But thoughts alone are the key to a whole new world of hidden desires.

Potter’s eyes are open wide as a gasp, and as Severus pores through his mind, he sees true treasure at last, a secret desire laid out for him to find. And Severus longs to feast upon the banquet of that desire, just as he has already indulged himself in smaller delicacies for years.

 _I know,_ he thinks. _I know this. I know him, as no one else will._

 _But does it mean he’s mine? Would he want to be?_

_Why would he ever want someone like me, when he can have the world?_

_No one ever wants their innermost secrets sliced open and seen, just as no one wants me to stay; Lily did not._

_Enough!_ Potter would say that it’s just teenaged hormones. At the best of times, carnal desires could be guessed and used against Severus, so he’d been careful to quell them at every turn. But what’s much worse is that right now Snape is as much a slave to his lust as any adolescent. When Potter retreats behind his clumsy smokescreen of erratic images, Severus fights not to see them as erotic. What would he do if Potter ever realised that his efforts to conceal his private fantasies were futile all along, that all of Potter’s dark, dirty, guilty pleasures had been dragged up to the surface of his ravished mind time and time again? At that very moment, the boy shudders and it’s as if he too is a Legilimens, as if he has discerned Snape’s secret just as surely as Severus had already discovered his. What if he had? Would he recoil in disgust? Or would he push, and push, and push like any Gryffindor, until there were no more secrets left between them? Severus’ mouth goes dry at the thought of Potter suddenly peering past all Severus’ decades of defenses, straight into the core of his being. Severus can’t tell if the hammering of his heart is from anticipation or fear.

 _Enough! Occlumens!_

He won’t let Potter into the sanctuary of his own mind. The boy needs to be kept out and kept safe. Even if it means that Severus needs to push Potter away.

At the moment, Potter is still within reach. Severus can hear the rapid rhythm of his breathing, and he can’t help but wonder how that warm, panting body would feel pressed to his own. He tells himself that such questions are merely the healthy curiosity of a researcher, of an observer, and does his damnedest to ignore that annoying twinge of senseless need, deep beneath all his rationalisations. _How would it really feel? I’ve dreamed of it enough._

Would it be so bad to find out? Just one touch. Just one chance to know, for once in his life, how it feels to be wanted.

Looking back, Severus knows that no-one has ever truly wanted him, not for himself. His mother hadn’t wanted him; the fact that he was an accident had been hammered into him as soon as he’d been old enough to understand his father’s drunken rages. His housemates hadn’t wanted him; at best they’d tolerated him for the points he’d earned, though their contempt for his poverty and impure blood never faded. The closest he’d come to acceptance had been when first Voldemort then Dumbledore had found his talents useful: the potions he brewed, the curses he invented, the secrets he uncovered. Secrets like the ones brimming behind green eyes, practically pleading to be seen. The temptation to take what is offered grows until it’s overwhelming. Severus has to do something, either burst into the boy’s mind, an invasion as intimate as flesh, or...

“Harry.”

Even that name is an overture, Severus realises belatedly when he sees the surprise in Harry’s face. Only now does Severus remember he’s never called Harry by that name before. This small intimacy has already committed him, Severus knows it, and he acts with the speed of desperation, striding closer to Harry, suddenly determined to remove all distance between them. But then Harry takes a step back, and Severus can’t tell from his face or his manner if the movement is just reflex or if Harry has had second thoughts, and there’s only one way to know for sure. “Legilimens!” It’s like stepping into a kaleidoscope of bright images that whirl within his mind fast as autumn leaves in a hurricane. It’s a rush of thought and need, frantic with the impetuous haste of youth, but nowhere in all that tumult is the rejection Severus had feared. At last, they truly see each other.

“Harry,” Severus says. “I know.”  
  
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End file.
